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29th ACM Intl. Programming Contest Results
mathinator writes "The 29th ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, hosted by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, are now over and the results are in.
Congratulations to the top 4 teams who will be walking away with gold medals. They are Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Moscow State University, St. Petersburg Institute of Optics and Mechanics, and Canada's University of Waterloo (coming in at 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively. The top 4 get gold medals).
Regional champions are: University of Waterloo, Canada (North America); Moscow State University, Russia (Europe); University of Cape Town, South Africa, (Africa and the Middle East); Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, Brazil (Latin America); Shanghai Jiaotong University, China (Asia); and University of New South Wales, Australia (South Pacific)."
If you look at the "Top 4", you will see that the region groupings only allows one winner from North America. A Canadian college got this one, but there are US schools in the results list of runner ups.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The complete list of problems can be found here, along with some sample inputs/outputs (usual format for these types of contest).
The finals problem set (PDF) is at the finals home page.
I'm a Waterloo student and it's awesome to see how we did. Waterloo competes regularly and has had a winning place several times before.
As for the people who have been insinuating that the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rigged the results, take a look at the past winners page. They were the winners in 2002 as well (hosted in Honolulu).
As for the actual problem set: it can be found (PDF)here.
Actually, this is the INTERNATIONAL Collegiate Programming Contest. The way it works is that each country is split up into regions. The first round consists of regionals and the qualifiers move to the final round where they compete against the top teams from other countries. So, in a sense, this *was* a US-based competition for the first round.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
"I'm not sure how you could objectively measure something like this"
I did the competition in 2001 when I was in college. It may be slightly different now, but back then each team of 3 students got 9 problems and an hour to code solutions on one machine. You submitted your code to a server and it compiled it and ran it against unknown input and output (we knew the parameters, but not the actual input). Success/failure notices, or compilation errors were quickly IM'd back to you.
The team is scored using this criteria
1. Number of problems solved
2. The total time taken before submitting correct answers + any penalty minutes for submitting incorrect or incompilable code.
So a team who got 9 questions right in a half hour would score better than a team who got 9 right in 45 minutes.
(As for how we did, we were able to solve 4/9 questions and tied for 17th place. Results here. I was on the American University team, AU One)
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
I participated in the southern regional ACM programming contest. GaTech won with Florida coming in second. The questions are extremely hard. We solved one problem. They give you 5 lines of test data but when the judges test it they will use hundreds of lines of test data. Not only must your program be correct it must also be fast (less than 3 minutes)
;)
oh and honorable mention means you didn't solve any. Take that Tech!
-Brian
You can see past winners here: http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/default.htm
University of Waterloo is THE top school in Canada according to Maclaens and is THE top University in Canada for Engineering + CS. The University has the largest Co-op education service in the world. All engineering students and CS students have Co-op every other term. I'm on my co-op term right now. The University's main goal as of now is to ready its students for the work force. We gain 2 years work experience by the time we graduate.
The University is very young (I think found in 1957) and has rapidly grown because of its connections with companies like RIM and COM DEV. Our Chancellor is the President of RIM! RIM Headquarters is next door to us. Across the street we have the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
Also, UW is the recruiting ground for M$ (maybe we all hate them, but meh). A lot of the top engineers and programmers in Canada come from UW and end up in the states due to nice offers and oppurtunities. We call that the "Brain Drain."
UW DOES NOT have courses or teachings that are directed towards contests. The courses are extemely rigourous with high expectations. All courses force a lot of critical thinking. We take Math and Science seriously here.
UW conducts nationwide math, physics, and chem contests to high schoolers as well. In Engineering you have to write an entrance math test (which most people fail, but its Bell Curved). If your below standards, they offer mandatory math tutorial services to you. We also recently placed 4th in PUTNAM math comepetition.
Also, addressing the jokes about US being beaten by Canada: Canada has played important roles in science and engineering. Especially since the layed off workers from the Arrow project worked on NASA's Mercury and Apollo missions. That's right, it's our engineers and scientists that helped US get to the Moon. The Arrow project in itself is a great feat for Canada. Arrow was for more advanced than any US aircraft for very long time.
Currently, UW is looking towards raising funds and improving our Graduate programs to become top notch like MIT. We are also investing quite a lot of money to bring top professors in. UW is already good enough to be treated like an Ivy League school in my opinion. However, once we do invest in research I can garantee 50 years from now it will be well known and respected Internationally.
O, by the way...I'm an American :P.